My first class-1

My first class

By Michelle Kiernan
Sep 3, 2008
School of Education
Long Island University, C.W.Post

Being in a new atmosphere, especially a classroom has always been nerve racking, since I can remember. I always seem to get those back to school jitters. As I walked into class, so many unfamiliar faces surrounded me and I really did not know what to expect. However, those nerves slowly began to fade when I learned what was prepared for class that day. We started with the name game. I was a little skeptical at first, but began to love this as a way to start of class. This game let everyone in class interact, joke around with one another, and learn a little something about each other. It was pretty interesting to see how people wanted you to remember their name, whether it was by rhyme, using a word with the same letter, or just something he or she liked. Even our teacher joined in the game, which made it even more enjoyable. I remember playing this game in high school, but I was never very good at it. Unlike high school, we now had to use a strategy with our name and repeat that as well. The use of repetition and strategies provided an excellent learning experience as well as a great easy way to remember people’s names.

Even the next day, I found myself remembering classmate’s names when I saw them in the hall. This exercise proved to be very successful and will probably be something I use when I too am a teacher. It was a great way to break the ice in addition to being a learning experience. The group discussion at the end tied that class together and aloud the students to interact with their own thoughts and ideas about the name game.